Qualitative research can be distinguished as a small number of specific study of cases using subjective observational techniques principally (Ragin

2004). Examples of qualitative research consist observation of field interviews, expert review, cognitive interviews and interviewer and supervisor debriefings. By using these approaches, the core foundation can be investigated, construct new theories and support the hypotheses established. Qualitative evaluation method can give advantageous information although it might be subjective but otherwise, information might not be obtainable. [Whole paragraph from - Does qualitative evaluation measure up?] Qualitative research can be categorised into two major types, which are participant observation and in-depth interviewing. Participant observation usually takes a long period of time participating in the life of the participants and having direct observation. In-depth interview uses open ended questions to encourage full, expressive answer, allowing participant to answer the questions with their own knowledge and feelings. The key characteristics of qualitative research is that it is naturalistic, contains descriptive data, concerns with process rather than just the outcomes and inductive. [Whole paragraph from - Qualitative research for education] [All underneath from - Qualitative interview design] The design of qualitative interview can be straightforward or complex depending on the researcher and the understanding of the methodology. There are a variety of forms to design the interview which can help to generate thick and rich data from a qualitative investigational point of view (Creswell, 2007). The different interview design formats have been summarised by Gall, Gall and Borg (2003), which are informal conversational interview, general interview guide approach and standardised open-ended interview. Informal conversational interview is to observe the participants viewpoint through a natural interaction relying on the spontaneous generation of questions. By using informal conversational approach, researcher does not have any predetermined set of structured questions to ask participant but only relying on the interaction in order to guide the process of interview (McNamara, 2008). The advantage of using this approach is that the lack of structure engage more flexibility. Despite that, this approach can be quite unstable or

unreliable as the interview is quite inconsistent, which makes it complicated to code data (Creswell, 2007). To succeed in informal conversational interview, it is key to acknowledge the need for flexibility and originality in questioning. The general interview guide approach is similar to the informal conversational interview, however, it is a lot more structured, allowing only a bit of flexibility (Gall, Gall & Borg, 2003). Consistency would depend upon the researchers as they would be wording the questions and conducting the interview. As interviewer alternates the way they ask the questions, answer of same questions may be lack in consistently from respondents (McNamara, 2008). Advantages of using this approach is that although questions are structured, being able to interact with participants in an informal environment, researcher could ask follow-up and probing question based on participants response. Hence, it could give a more personal approach to the interview. According to MacNamara (2009), the ability of researcher would determines the strenght of the interview as researcher needs to make sure information from same common areas are collected from each participants. This approach would give more focus than the informal conversation interview but still adjust for some freedom and being able to adapt to participants to obtain more information. Comparing to the two approaches that are introduced, standardised openended interview is extremely structured. The wording of every questions are predetermined so that each participants would always be asked with same questions but since the questions is open-ended, participants would give dissimilar answer (Gall, Gall & Borg, 2003). With open-ended type of questions, participants can give as much information as possible in details and researcher could always ask follow up and probing questions. This approach is the most popular amongst the three interview design as the nature of the open-ended questions enable participants to express their point of views and experiences in all respect. One drawback of using the standardised open-ended interview approach is that it is not so easy to code the data (Creswell, 2007) because of the open-ended nature, participants can give any answer so it is difficult to excerpt themes and codes that are alike. Therefore, it might be a fairly complicated process for researcher to narrow down the response to reflect the

overall viewpoint of all interviewees in all respect accurately. Nevertheless, the more the participants involve, the least biases it will get according to Gall, Gall, and Borg (2003).